Peter James - Not Dead Yet

Katz raised his arms in a shrug of helplessness. His hairline appeared to have receded a couple of inches in the past few days of constant stress.

‘I knocked on her trailer door twenty minutes ago and someone shouted she’d be out in a few moments.’ He adjusted his headset then spoke urgently into it. ‘Joe, any sign of Gaia?’

Brooker checked his watch. ‘Not twenty minutes ago, Barnaby. That was thirty minutes ago. Prima donnas! God I hate them. Goddamn actresses! Thirty fucking minutes she’s kept us.’ He turned to the director, Jack Jordan. ‘You know what thirty minutes costs us, don’t you, Jack?’

Jordan gave a benign shrug, long used to being messed around by out-of-control egos on both side of the lens. With his mane of white hair flowing from beneath his baseball cap, the veteran filmmaker looked as ever like an ancient soothsayer and, true to that persona, was keeping his calm. He needed to. This was the most important scene in the movie and with every single one of the stars featuring, the most expensive. The money shot .

Brooker banged his fists together. ‘This is ridiculous. Has someone pissed her off today or what?’ He glared at Jordan. ‘Have you had another argument with her over her lines?’

‘Darling, I haven’t had a peep out of her since yesterday. She was as good as gold last time we spoke. Just give her a few more minutes. She has to be patient for her heavy make-up and her wig is damned uncomfortable, it tickles her face, poor love.’

Poor love, Brooker thought, cynically. Gaia was getting paid fifteen million bucks for just seven weeks’ work. He could put up with his face being tickled for seven weeks for that kind of dough, he thought.

‘Goddamn ridiculous wig,’ Brooker said. ‘Can hardly see her face. Makes her look like a sheep in a corset. I’m paying all this goddamn money to have Gaia, and we could have had anyone inside that dress and hair.’ He looked at his watch again. ‘Five minutes. If she’s not on set in five minutes I’m gonna – I’m gonna…’ He hesitated, wary of making a fool of himself and of upsetting the icon. The truth was, when you worked on a small independent production with an actress as big as Gaia, you had to tread carefully. Irritate her and she might start to slow down even more and run you days – if not weeks – over schedule, with all its crippling consequences. There had already been a couple of occasions during this past week when Gaia, turning suddenly imperious, made Brooker realize that, without ever saying as much, she knew very well that there was only one reason he had managed to get this movie into production. That all of them were only here making this movie for that same one reason.

Which was, that she, Gaia, had said yes .

It took Guy Batchelor a moment to pluck up the courage to step forward again and look back into the chest freezer. The cold air swirling around him felt part of the same ice that was coursing his veins.

A human head lay on the bottom, face up, between several packs of frozen peas, beans and broccoli, like some hideous ornament. A man’s face. The flesh was grey, flecked with frost, and the hair was coated with frost, as if he were wearing a white beanie. The eyes were shrunken, like tiny marbles.

Despite the discoloration and the patches obscured by frost, he recognized the face instantly from the photographs he had seen: Myles Royce, winner of the auction for Gaia’s yellow tweed suit.

As he turned away and stepped back into the kitchen, Brett Wallace said, ‘Is that the bit you’re missing from “Unknown Berwick Male”?’

‘Yes, I’d say it is,’ Batchelor replied.

One of the other Search Unit officers, who was busily peering beneath a dishwasher with a torch, looked up. ‘Brett’s mum said he was always good at jigsaw puzzles as a kid.’

The DS smiled, then pulled out his phone and called the SIO.

Grace listened intently to the news from Guy Batchelor, trying to think clearly through the panic engulfing him, trying to make some fast decisions. The Chief Constable and the Assistant Chief Constable needed to be informed before they found themselves in the embarrassing situation of hearing about the discovery of Royce’s head on the news. But before he did that, Grace had one absolute priority.

He rang the US cellphone number of Gaia’s head of security.

‘Andrew Gulli,’ he answered, almost instantly, as if expecting a call.

‘It’s Roy Grace.’

‘Inspector Grace – I-’ The James Cagney whine sounded uneasy.

‘We have an emergency situation, Mr Gulli. I have a copy of the production call sheet, and see your client’s shooting at the Pavilion this evening. I’m extremely concerned for her safety – I’ve reason to believe there’s a person out there intent on harming her. He’s already killed at least once. We know what he looks like and we know his disguise, and I think we have a good chance of catching him very quickly. But I don’t want to take any risks with your client so what I’d like to do, with your support, is remove her from the set and keep her and her son indoors in her suite, under guard, for the next twenty-four hours. Is that possible?’

‘Hey, Inspector, you and I are on the same page. But I can’t help you. I got fired this morning.’

‘Fired?’

‘I’m flying back to LA tomorrow.’

‘Gaia? Gaia fired you? In the middle of this situation?’

‘Yeah, well, the thing is, I told my client I was insisting on her leaving England right away, today, and flying back to the States – and to hell with the consequences. She wouldn’t have it. So we had a kind of a Mexican stand-off. She told me if I didn’t change my attitude, I’d be fired. I told her, “Ms Lafayette, I’m not risking your life, nor your son’s life. You crazy or something? To hell with the consequences.”’ There was a brief silence then Gulli went on. ‘I tell you, Inspector, she was getting paid peanuts for this film compared to what she earns performing, so what the hell, let them sue, I told her. Better to be sued than dead. But she wouldn’t have it. I told her, I was not letting her go on set. So she fired me.’

‘Want me to try speaking to her?’

‘Gaia Lafayette does what Gaia Lafayette wants, Inspector. She doesn’t listen to anybody.’

‘I’m going to go talk to her right now,’ Grace said.

‘Good luck. You’re gonna need it.’

He ended the call with Gulli and immediately phoned the Ops 1 Controller Andy Kille, glad that he was still on duty. ‘We’ve found Myles Royce’s head,’ he informed him. ‘And the suspect’s at large with, I believe, real intent to harm Gaia. I’m circulating images of Eric Whiteley and his Anna Galicia persona – I’m printing copies for all officers on duty, and PCSOs. And I want every available officer and PCSO we have, deployed to the Pavilion right away. I want to make it an island site.’

‘I could draft in some Specials as well,’ Kille said helpfully.

‘Anyone you can get,’ Grace replied. ‘Until we’ve got this maniac locked up.’

‘I’m upgrading this to a Critical Incident,’ Kille said. ‘Graham Barrington’s Duty Gold and Nick Sloan’s Silver.’

Grace thanked him and looked at his watch: 6.15 p.m. According to her schedule on the call sheet, Gaia had been required in her trailer for make-up and wardrobe at 4 p.m., two hours before she was due on set. He turned to the forensic podiatrist. ‘Haydn, I want you to go back to the CCTV room – I’ll get anyone who’s available to help you there. I need you to watch the cameras on the streets around the Pavilion for any sign of Eric Whiteley – or Anna Galicia.’